February 29, 2012

A) A rabbi checked out the potentially Jewish names for PSAT semifinalists in 2012 (see my Taki's Magazine column "The East Rises in the West") and came up with a range of 81 to 125 Jewish surnames, or 4 to 6 percent out of 1,950. I have to believe that this is way down from the percent of Jewish National Merit semifinalists in California in the 1970s. Has California's Jewish community shrunk just in relative terms, or in absolute terms (Portland, here we come?). Has marrying shiksas diluted the gene pool? Do Jewish kids try less hard now? But they seemed to be pretty heavy dope smokers at Beverly Hills H.S. in 1975? Or have Asians raised the test scores at the high end?

B) My Taki column is on PSAT semifinalists in California in 2011, but I found on College Confidential an analysis of the 2010 California semifinalists, and if you can't trust anonymous posters on College Confidential, whom can you trust?

Out of 2,003 semifinalists who took the PSAT in California in the spring of 2010:

This is what California's technocratic class will look like 20 years hence:

135 comments:

Iranian names aren’t always easy to distinguish from Armenian, Arab and Indian, but looking quickly I found 12 Iranian-sounding names in California, based on first and last (if you have a shiite first and last name in California, you are far more likely to be Iranian than Arab).

Students in 7th and 8th grade take the SAT or ACT to qualify for the Johns Hopkins talent search. Those who score 700 or above on the math or verbal sections of the SAT before turning 13 qualify for the Study of Exceptional Talent (SET). Here are the last names of students qualifying for the SET in reading AND math in 2011:

When I worked in direct mail back in the 1980's, there were services that would sort your mailing list by ethnicity. If you only wanted to mail to Jewish subscribers to TV Guide, for example, they claimed to be able to pull out the typically Jewish names from the list.

30 years later, I can't believe there isn't a website that does the same thing. But I don't know of one.

In the US and UK, more Black men are married to White women than vice versa and there are more White men married to Asian women than vice versa. Models of interracial marriage, based on the exchange of racial status for other capital, cannot explain these asymmetries. A new explanation is offered based on the relative perceived facial attractiveness of the different race-by-gender groups....This explanation was tested using a survey of perceived facial attractiveness. This found that Black males are perceived as more attractive than White or East Asian males whereas among females, it is the East Asians that are perceived as most attractive on average.

I checked out the list of semifinalists from Ohio, that being a less ethnically diverse state than California. The two schools with the most semifinalists, with 21 each, are Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, a very highly ranked school, and Solon High School, which serves Cleveland's most upscale suburb.

I counted about 18 Japanese-American surnames when I looked through the names in 2010. So this estimate of 18 surnames is probably accurate.

I also left a comment which is pretty relevant.

Looking at the California list, I find about 20 [actual number = 18] Japanese-American names out of around 2000 students, for a grand total of 1% of the names. According to the 2000 census, Japanese-Americans form 1.1% of California's population. So they are about as well represented as NMSQT/PSAT winners as they are in the general population.

Whites form 44% of California's population, but 40% of the PSAT winners according to the official stats (this is not including students who fail to report their race, which would elevate the white percentage by a few points). So whites are represented about in proportion to their population too.

By the way, 11% of succesful PSAT takers did not state a race. Assuming they resemble the other 89% who did, then whites consitute 45% of successul PSAT takers - v.s. 44% of California's population.

Just in case you're wondering, Japanese-Americans and whites have similar age demographics. So they tend to be equally well represented in the high school-age demographic that takes the PSAT/NMSQT.

One more thing..... White California students score about 0.1standard deviations below the white American mean. So perhaps white Californians are dragged down slightly, maybe by white immigrants from the Mid East, Armenia, and the former USSR.

I should also mention that conservative ethnographer Thomas Sowell wrote in Ethnic America that Japanese immigrants were of middle class peasant background, with the wealthy being unwilling to migrate and the underclass being discouraged. So our Japanese-American community is not selection biased downward at all.

Outmarriage probably doesn't make much of a difference, as people tend to engage in assortive mating with those of similar SES. Furthermore, as Professor Flynn noted, Japanese-Americans tend to overperform their IQ, so when they do intermarry among their different-race academic peers and coworkers, they're probably acquiring higher IQ partners than they would have normally attained through same-race marriage.

The relatively undistinguished performance of Japanese-Americans suggests that Tiger Mothering makes a huge difference, as does selection-biased migration.

"This explanation was tested using a survey of perceived facial attractiveness. This found that Black males are perceived as more attractive than White or East Asian males whereas among females, it is the East Asians that are perceived as most attractive on average."

No, it's because black male face is associated with tough masculinity and Asian female face is associated with femininity. So, the respondents weren't so much responding to the faces per se as what those faces signify. Lots of white women associate blacks with funky music and sports(and big peniss), and so when they see a black face, they think 'tough guy'. Similarly, many white males associate Asian women with more 'demure' qualities, and so when they see an Asian face, they think, 'a woman who will love me and stay loyal'.

So, the so-called finding in this study has less to do with race than with the dynamic of sexuality. Women like manlier men and men like womanlier women. And white women find black men manlier and white men find Asian women womanlier based on what they've seen in sports, music, movies, schools, streets.

If black male face wasn't associated with music and rap AND If asian female face wasn't associated with Suzie Wong, white men and women would have responded differently.

Suppose white women are turned on by kinky Afro-hair cuz they associate it with black male muscle. Does that men white women are turned on by the kinky hair itself?

Anyway, though this study was done to attack 'racism', it proves the truth of race-ism. It's real racial differences that explain why white women find black men manlier and why white men find Asian more feminine. It's because blacks are indeed tougher while Asians are indeed smaller.

"I agree that Jews should be classified as Asians. They are from Asia and their homeland is in Asia."

But then, many Russians would count as Asians. Btw, the division of the continent between Asia and Europe makes no real sense since they are part of one land mass.

Anyway, do Arabs, Persians, and Jews racially, historically, and culturally have more in common with Europeans or with East Asians? I think on three levels, Iranians and Jews have more in common with Europeans than with Chinese or Japanese.

I did a similar eyeball test on the membership list of the Prometheus Society (IQ 164+) in the mid-80's. Jews and NW Europeans were over-represented. It was also 90% male. I asked about this in the newsletter, but people rather looked away, hemming and hawing.

I wasn't sure if the student named Eghbalnia at Walnut Hills H.S. in Cincinnati was South Asian, so I Googled the surname. Chances are pretty good it's the son (or daughter) of this person. Not so surprising why the young person is such a high achiever.

Here's a much tougher project for you. Figure out the name mappings (to caste and region) from the IIT merit list (this is an exam in India) for the top 10, 100, and 1000 ranks. As has been noted by many observers south indian brahmins are a fairly small minority in IITs these days (unlike the past). Maybe other (mostly North Indian merchant castes) who dont come from a traditionally culture that values academic learning have figured out how to beat the system (much like dragon moms of the east asian variety)?

What about the Laotians in GRAN TORINO? They were a hideous bunch though the one family was nice. I wonder if there's a huge cultural gulf between Asian Belmonters and Asian fishtowners.

The thing about Murray's book is the data can be read differently. In some ways, white communities -- up and down -- have been coming closer together. Look at SOCIAL NETWORK. There isn't much sense of eliteness there. In LOVE STORY, Oliver Barrett was really elite-like. But the kids in SOCIAL NETWORK seem like partying kids at any State university. And look at how Bill Gates dresses. Middle class folks in the 30s dressed more special. And rich, middle, and low folks all watch SIMPSONS. In the 60s, the educated were supposed to be into art film, but today, even elite critics spend much of their time reviewing Hollywood stuff. High brow, middle brow, and low brow stuff is gone. And in the past, rich white folks spoke in a respectable manner, which is why Buckley was possible. But imagine any person, even a privileged white person, talking that way today. And in HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT, Murray heaped praise on SIMPSONS, a show popular among all races and classes. (I can't stand it.) Today, even educated don't listen to much classical music. Rich educated folks attend Bruce Springsteen concerts about the working man; ironically, they may be the only folks who can afford it. So, in many ways, the classes have been culturally coming together.

Since old-fashioned snobbery is no longer allowed in terms of manners, dress, and taste, the rich have found new ways to feel special and different. To make their neo-snobbery permissible, they've moralized it. So, they'll say, "look at my eco-friendly $300 coffee maker", or look at my "Miles Davis cd collection"--aka I'm not 'racist'. Or look at my $80,000 'green car' that fights global warming. This way, they can have the cake and eat it too. They can own expensive stuff which most people can't afford but also act holier-than-thou cuz they are sooooooo conscientious about saving the planet. So, paradoxically, the new form of coming apart could be the result of culturally coming together. When rich folks and poor folks all watch the same shit on TV, rich folks need something to make them special and different.

@nsam, many students including brahmins are not even trying for IIT, since it interferes too much with 12th grade exam. For many students it is too much of a risk to cram for IIT and lose in the CBSE-12th grade

*My 2 nieces got CBSE 1st and CBSE 4th for TN area, and did not even attempt IIT, but went to Guindy, got 1510 in GRE and PhD in US

*The number-1 IIT school in India is DAV-Gopalapuram Chennai, which is 75% Tamil Brahmin, and each year 15 students win IIT. Noticeably hundreds of other DAV schools which are identical except for lack of Tambram students do not score high in this regard.

*http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?218344

Has a list of 70 best private schools in India, and in studies, 17 of them score over 9.0 / 106 of this 17 are Tambram dominated schools

Of which 1 is a SIB dominated school in RK puram, Delhi and 5 are Tam-bram schools in Chennai - DAV, Padma seshadri, Vidya mandir, Bharatiya Vidya bhavan etc

My heard hurts. Not all Jews are European, but I think those who've lived in Europe for many centuries or even millennia would have become European by now. Most European Jews look partly or fully European.

The notion of an Asian-European divide comes down to us most vividly from Herodotus's history of the Persian-Greek wars (e.g., the movie "300"). But Herodotus was from Halicarnassus in Asia (modern Bodrum in Turkey).

Actually the IIT exam has become far less g loaded after it was revised. But yeah, my impression is that telugu reddys and kammas as well as north indian merchants probably have similar iq distributions to south indian brahmins, but differ in terms of specialized abilities.

1/ The Chinese invented standardised testing and have been enthusiastic about it ever since.

By contrast standardised testing has not been an important part of other people's cultures.

Therefore for a largely pointless test like the PSAT you would expect East Asians to participate in it to a greater extent.

By contrast among people from cultures who put being practical ahead of sitting a room with pencils and answering multiple choice questions you would expect less participation.

2/ A lot of Iranians in CA are Jews. Obviously they came to CA to mix Steve up.

3/ There don't appear to be many what I would call 'age-realists' here. A group could do very well on the PSAT, but if its members tend to be old, its group IQ could be much lower than the PSAT stats would indicate.

4/ In the event of a war 100 years hence between the Chinese and the Indians, I would put my money on the Indians. They are much younger.

Statements such as the one quoted above and others regarding Jews show either a lack of awareness of the most recent population genetic studies or an inability to understand them on the part of some of the commentariat here.

The last several years of autosomal genetic studies covering hundreds of thousands of loci across the genome show that Ashkenazi Jews cluster in a position intermediate between those of northern Middle Easterners and Southern Europeans. There is evidence of significant European admixture among the Ashkenazim in the 40-60% range (slightly less than 50% in analyses by Razib of GNXP per one of his comments a few months ago).

The Middle East is not a genetically undifferentiated place such that a label like "Semite", which includes groups as diverse as Ashkenazim and Sudanese "Arabs" carries that much meaning. Middle Eastern Jews and other non-Muslim populations of the Middle East have much less sub-Saharan admixture than the Muslim Arabs. Southern Middle Easterners (Yemenis, Saudis) and some North African Muslim groups such as Egyptians and Mozabites) have much more sub-Saharan admixture than more northern Middle Eastern Muslim groups. Even at the limited level of Y-chromosomes, which provide information about a tiny portion of any person's ancestry), the Northern Middle East is relatively enriched in haplogroup J2 compared to J1.

Perhaps some of the Jew-haters should trouble themselves to keep up with the literature before launching into embarrassingly ignorant comments.

If you searched for Einstein lookalikes where do you think you would be far more likely to find them, in Europe or West Asia? Obviously West Asia. Likewise for Marx. They were both swarthy and bushy haired. They are the two most influential Jews of the modern age.

I think most folks here tend to ignore history in their calculations. Until they were liberated from their ghettos in Christian Europe by the anti-church Enlightenment the Ashkenazi Jews were far from the overachievers they are today. Ancient Israel was a mediocre nation that produced neither science nor philosophy. Solomon had to outsource the building of his Temple to Gentiles, quite like how Algeria today is outsourcing the building of its billion dollar mosque to a Chinese construction company. Khazaria which was supposedly a Jewish central Asian nation was also a thoroughly mediocre nation that was soon forgotten. I think it is quite likely that a 100 years from now the Jews will be relative non-entities somewhat like the Greeks are today, a far cry from their respective golden ages.

The division of Europe against Asia was a Greek creation. The Greeks would have placed the Jews and all those who lived in what was then the Persian Empire as Asian. Jews are genetically, theologically and historically linked to the Near East, now and then part of Asia. It is not controversial to state the geographic fact that Israel is in Asia. Thus, it logically follows that Israelis are Asian. It is not a difficult step to say that Jews are Asian. The counter to this is that there has been much intermarriage in the thousand years Ashkinazim have been in Europe. But Hatians have been in the Americas for hundreds of years and we can still call them African. Boers have been in Africa for hundreds of years yet are still European. Even if they are half-European genetically, that still makes them half-Asian. And other Jewish sub-groups would be even more than half-Asian. I think the weirdness of calling Jews Asian comes from the PC driven nomenclature of geography-based names for ethnic groups. Saudis have more in common with Moroccans than Japanese. But such is the world we live in. Further, Jewish is primarily a religion, not ethnicity, even though for a thousand years they were nearly synonymous. This is quickly changing however.

I think the number of Asians could be severely undercounted using this method, since in Sailers most famous essay, most Asian intermarriages are with an Asian woman. Thus, something like 80% of half-Asian kids in schools in California will NOT have an Asian last name. Since most of these last names will be European, their number will be increased.For example, my last name is Foreman, though I am half-Korean. I was a National Merit finalist, but would have been counted as Euro.This would have a more ambiguous effect on Jews. Since Judaism is automatically conferred through the maternal line but surname through the paternal, over time the correlation between name and Jewishness will be less and less. For example, LeBeouf, Gyllenhaal, Johansson, Radcliffe, Rossum, Berkley, Blair, Connelly, Hannigan, Hudson, Ryder, Silverstone, Spelling, Arquette, Bonham Carter, Grey, and Parker are all last names of famous actors who are Jewish but with Anglo or Euro last names. All of these would be missed by the name-counting rabbi. And of course many Jews have anglicized their last names or changed them, especially if they had a background in Hollywood or endured persecution. In fact, my last name was changed to be less Jewish when my ancestors traveled to Germany after WWI.

If you searched for Einstein lookalikes where do you think you would be far more likely to find them, in Europe or West Asia? Obviously West Asia.

I don't find your saying "obviously" to be a persuasive argument. I have not been to "Western Asia", so-called, but I have been to Eastern Europe - Romania and Bulgaria - and there are a lot of people who look like Einstein there.

The last several years of autosomal genetic studies covering hundreds of thousands of loci across the genome show that Ashkenazi Jews cluster in a position intermediate between those of northern Middle Easterners and Southern Europeans. There is evidence of significant European admixture among the Ashkenazim in the 40-60% range (slightly less than 50% in analyses by Razib of GNXP per one of his comments a few months ago).

I'm not going to say that you're wrong, exactly, just that your truth is incomplete.

Studies which find Middle-Eastern heritage in European Jews are studies which focus on mitochondrial DNA. This is distinct from your cells regular DNA. It is distinct from what we customarily call simply "your DNA".

The DNA of European Jews is European. Their mitochondrial DNA contains a record of their thousands of years long journey from the Near East.

It's also worth pointing out that the mitochondrial DNA of people in North Africa and the Near East makes them part of the "European cluster", separate from the Africans to the south or the Asians to the East.

Jews claiming a unique identity for themselves while denying a unique identity to everyone else is fundamental to their history.

The question of whether or not Jews are Asians has no connection to the question of what Jews may "claim" for themselves.

Jews may claim to be descended from a race of star people and to have no genetic connection to the rest of the human race, if they like. (And you do sometimes get the impression that there are Jews out there who would like)

First names can be helpful in determining whether Asian students are first-generation immigrants or were born in America. For example (to use a couple of Solon H.S. students), Yuxi Liu is almost certainly an immigrant, while Katie Oh is probably American-born.

There are Jews and then there are Jews. The Ashkenazi Jews spent centuries in Europe. Even a 1% intermarriage rate adds up over generations, yielding something that is different from the surrounding Europeans and also different from the Semites.

The Ashkenazi Jews spent centuries in Europe. Even a 1% intermarriage rate adds up over generations, yielding something that is different from the surrounding Europeans and also different from the Semites

Could you elaborate on the extent to which a 1% intermarriage rate would "add up" over several generations? In my calculations it doesn't add up to much, and even less if you allow that some of the descendents of intermarriage branched off into the European population.

People taking about several different things does not mean that those several things are intertwined.

For instance the question of whether or not your IQ manages to reach triple digits, while an interesting one and no doubt well worth exploring, is not "intertwined" with the question of whether or not the people of the Near East are genetically "Asians".

So placing Jews in the Asian population is now a "conspiracy," despite Jews themselves proclaiming their ancestors to have been from Asia

Strange, but I don't recall a single Jew ever claiming that "my ancestors came from Asia". From Israel, yes. From Asia, not so much. But please, feel free to cite for me all those proclaiming Asian Jews.

despite genetic studies consistent with Asian ancestry.

There are no genetic studies consistent with an Asian genetic ancestry for Jews.

"Asian", the genetic grouping is not the same as "Asia", the continent - a continent which happens to include Europe.

In other shocking news, the genetic group we call "African" does any actually include all of the people living on the African continent. Berbers are African in the sense that they live in Africa. Genetically speaking they completely separate from blacks and closely related to Europeans.

"2) "Near Eastern peoples" are part of the same genetic grouping which includes Europeans and excludes Asians and Africans."

Wrong. The Near East is in Asia

Whether or not the Near East is in Asia has nothing to do with the question of whether or not the people of the Near East are part of the same genetic grouping which includes Europeans nd excludes Asians and Africans.

If we used your "logic" we'd have to say that the pale skinned people currently living in North America are not Europeans, but "North Americans". George Bush, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul can't be genetically European, because they were born here in the continent of North America! So anyone who says they are "European" just needs you to give them your fourth grade geography lesson.

Strange, but I don't recall a single Jew ever claiming that "my ancestors came from Asia". From Israel, yes. From Asia, not so much. But please, feel free to cite for me all those proclaiming Asian Jews.

anonynmous occurs more and more frequently in the comments after "da jews" comes up as a topic, increasingly asymptotically until the entire thread is nothing but anonymouses responding to anonymouses.

With Europe being a small and homogenous continent, people might wrongly think of other continents being the same.

Europe is home to one race, as commonly defined. Africa, at least two. Asia, at least three.

Europe has mostly Christianity with spots of Judaism and Islam. Africa has Christianity, Islam, animism, paganism. Asia has all the above plus Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Confucianism (and many other religions I can't remember.)

Europe does have a great diversity of nations, and political and economic systems, though.

With Europe being a small and homogenous continent, people might wrongly think of other continents being the same.

I agree with the rest of what you say, but Europe is not a continent, strictly speaking. It's not a "large land mass surrounded or almost surrounded by water". Europe is a peninsula of the Asian (sometimes called Eurasian) landmass.

"The 50% figure does not pertain to the DNA of European Jews, which is exclusively European. It refers to the mitochondrial DNA of certain Jews."

You haven't read the papers. Of the earlier uniparental studies, the Y-chromosome based studies starting with Hammer et al. back in 1999 or 2000 provided the strongest suggestion of a Near Eastern origin for Jews. The early mitochondrial DNA studies were actually less clear on that issue at the time, not surprisingly since there is more overlap between the set of European and Middle Eastern mitochondrial DNA's than there is between the set of Eurpean and Middle Eastern Y-DNA's. Anyway, Razib's slightly less than 50% figure as well as the formally published estimates of 40-60% European admixture among Ashkenazim come out of the most recent autosomal genetic data. That is to say that the evidence shows both Middle Eastern-origin and European-origin alleles in Ashkenazim. For what it's worth, it's also very clear in the context of global genetic variation that Middle Eastern populations are among the closest to European populations. On PCA plots, northern Middle East and non-Muslim Middle East populations are much closer to Europeans than they are to either sub-Saharans or East Asians.

You haven't read the papers. Of the earlier uniparental studies, the Y-chromosome based studies starting with Hammer et al. back in 1999 or 2000 provided the strongest suggestion of a Near Eastern origin for Jews.

You haven't read the papers. Jews do not have an "origin" in the Near East, and neither does anybody else.

But let my quote Hammer -

"Our work has shown, as has others, that the Y chromosome diversity we see in men today traces back to a single man who lived probably in Africa. And when I say a single man, we have to be cautious in how we interpret that. There were many men living at the time, but because of the way the Y chromosome is inherited, as you trace it back in time it has to trace to a single common ancestor".

One point which many people seem not to get - genetic markers are not the last word on a persons complete genetic history. Henry Lewis Gates has genetic markers which tell us that at one point in his family tree, he had male O'Neill ancestors. Not many people would say that this makes him Irish though. Why does this reticence go out the window where Jews are concerned?

We all carry many, many different genetic markers. Whatever Gwyneth Paltrow's genetic markers may say about her, her genes, as manifested in her physical appearance, say she is European.

Nobody would have the audacity to look at a blue-eyed blonde and say "there goes a black African", even though the person in question of course has genetic markers indicating their common human origin in Africa. So why are so many people willing to pretend that people who are as European as I am are in fact Middle-Eastern?

Razib's slightly less than 50% figure as well as the formally published estimates of 40-60% European admixture among Ashkenazim come out of the most recent autosomal genetic data.

Humans share a lot more than a mere 50% of their DNA with apes. In fact it's in the 95% - 99% range. All this shows us is that these percentage figures are meaningless - a very small number of genes make for a great deal of difference, in species and in races.

1. South Indian Brahmin2. Gujurati Brahmin3. Reddy4. Telegu Chetty Merchant5. Marwari Hindu Merchant6. Punjabi Khatri Merchant7. North Indian Brahmin8. Reddy9. South Indian Brahmin10. South Indian Brahmin11. North Indian Merchant12. North Indian Brahmin13. Sindhi Merchant14. North Indian Merchant15. South Indian Brahmin16. North Indian Brahmin17. South Indian Brahmin18. North Indian Merchant19. South Indian Brahmin20. Jain21. Reddy22. Reddy23. North Indian Brahmin24. North Indian Brahmin25. Jain26. North Indian Merchant27. North Indian Merchant28. South Indian Brahmin29. South Indian Brahmin30. North Indian Brahmin

--

The only new development is that a handful of Reddys are now showing up at the top levels of the IITs and the number of South Indian brahmins has gone down to about 25% of the top names instead of the typical 40%

Yeah. Rec1man, i was talking to some professors in indian research universities and they all basically said the same thing. Telugus are doing quite well and have a tfr that is 1.8. The telugu brahmins, reddys, and kammas have maybe 1.2 kids on average and invest in their education well. They are roughly 8 to 10 percent of the population and dominate south indian academia recently.

rec1man, perhaps we should take this offline. how do I contact you? whats remarkable is the very large representation of north indian merchants and if you include jains (who are from rajasthan etc), the north indians have a very large representation (I'd guess they easily outnumber the south indians). These folks were not as well represented at all 20 years back. Maybe they figured out how to invest in education or somehow grind it out to pass this exam. Overall the majority of folks (do a count for the top few hundred if you can) seem to be from the North. This suggests that Northern elites weren't as decimated as some of your earlier hypotheses seemed to indicate in the medieval periods.

Nsam. Google andhra pradesh plus iit. Andhra pradesh in 2010 and 2011 combined produced 12 of the top 20 students i.e. top 10 x 2 years. For a state that is 5 pc of india's population that is remarkable. Toppers were a mix of kammas, brahmins, and reddys. One north india based in andhra was also among the 12. I dont see any north indian dominance.

Anon: Take a look at the comprehensive 2011 DB. I'd agree that the Andhra Pradesh representation has increased quite a bit over the years but so has several north indian merchant castes (there are for example 6 Gargs in the top 100; this is a UP based merchant caste). Of the top 100, I could identify 56 unambiguously as non-south indian (which I take as a combination of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra). Besides AP, the other south indian states aren't faring that well on this metric.

Doing a "grep -c -i" on the iit2011main.txt file for a few select Uttar Pradesh Bania names (merchant caste) totals to an astounding 10% of the list. I am sure that there are plenty of other merchant castes in the mix. This doing well on tough entrance examinations has transitioned from a largely brahmin enterprise to a vastly increased representation of the merchant castes (in the North and Andhra Pradesh, it seems) whose infatuation with higher education seems to be a fairly recent thing.

Nsam, North Indian banias are plenty smart. IMO, there is not much to choose between the following groups in terms of IQ (i.e. likely upper bound of 5-7 points for the difference in mean IQs between any 2 of the following groups): North Indian Brahmin, South Indian Brahmin, North Indian Bania, Reddys, Kammas, Marwaris, Jains (whether Marwari or not), and Kayasthas. It mostly boils down therefore to investment in one's children's education and the incentive to perform and train for competitive examinations. I don't think genetics should be seen as the key explanation for these trends because they seem very unstable.

PS: The dominance of elite Math - a much, much, much higher threshold than IIT - by Tamil Brahmins is very interesting to me as it doesn't seem to replicate itself at lower levels (recently). One explanation is the JEE being less g-loaded now. Do you have any other explanation?

@Anon, there is another factor, in that the very nature of the IIT exam has changed

Previously people prepared for it for a few months, along with the 12th grade board exam

The 12th grade board exam, was the bird in hand, vs IIT as the 2 birds in the bush.

These days it is either IIT or 12th grade board exam. And if you fail to get into IIT, you are fully screwed. Whereas by focusing on 12th grade board exam, you can easily get into colleges, half a step below IIT

For example to get into NIT, which are ranked 15th in India( 1 to 14 are IIT ), you have to do well in the 12th grade board exam and the AIEEE exam, which is based on the CBSE board exam, and is a surer bet than spending 2 years coaching for the IIT and ignoring 12th grade board and ending up with nothing.

This makes risk averse castes not focus on IIT and prefer to focus on 12th grade CBSE board exam

My nieces who got PhD in the USA, and 1510 GRE, deliberately avoided IIT as it was too risky and got ranks 1, and 4 in the TN state for CBSE, 12th grade

Anon: This has been an interesting thread. I don't think g itself can predict much at the elite levels. Those probably depend on non-g components (unique). Take someone like Ramanujam who was a freak even at the elite level. That kind of ability is something special and cant be a consequence of being at the tail of g. Its obviously also not learnable. Besides external incentives, another genetic non-g factor, I posit, is what the reward circuits in the brain are reinforced by (this should explain gender differences). If someone dreams math, clearly their reward circuits are tuned very differently from the rest of us. Theres another more mundane reason why g isn't that important any more at even quasi-elite levels: computers (think Wolfram Alpha). Essentially you can use other peoples combined intelligence to churn out computations (so one can make do with specialized talents better than in the past).

There are cultural factors as well. If a culture values acquisition (as the bania/merchant castes do) its a given they have an advantage in entrepreneurial activities (thats changing though.. as brahmins are starting businesses rather than working for the bania..I dont think they are content with the moniker of the best second-rate men in the world.. http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/05/tamil-brahmins-best-second-rate-men-in.html On the flipside we are seeing the banias getting into high-flight academics/science etc. So these kinds of role specializations have strong environmental causes and can change rapidly.

The other joker in the pack is cultural factors.. things like stability of marriage, the ability to cooperate, accept authority (Han chinese). Granted these cultural aspects probably have had effects of personality.

rec1man is probably right that, at best, 20% of the Indian population is at par with Western/European IQ levels. The other 80% spans a huge range and wont be competitive with the Han. At the non-elite levels, g does matter hugely (esp for smart fraction cutoff implications).

Anon: Whether the IIT exams are less g-loaded. Well, they are trying to increase the percentage of female entrants (it used to be, in the old days, at 5 percent or less; nowadays closer to 20 percent possibly I hear) and whatever they did to accomplish that likely helps rote learning (and time spent on cramming), I suspect. At best, they are a tricky form of the AP (math,physics, chem) exams, I speculate (but I am not personally familiar with the changes).

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